


Waves That Pulled You Under

by crocodileinterior



Category: One Piece
Genre: Drowning, F/M, Mouth-to-Mouth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26092054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crocodileinterior/pseuds/crocodileinterior
Summary: Nami watches him atop Merry’s figurehead from afar and thinks that the sea might reach up to take him, to swallow him and carry him away. And then one day it does.
Relationships: Monkey D. Luffy/Nami
Comments: 11
Kudos: 67





	Waves That Pulled You Under

**Author's Note:**

> \- Takes place after Usopp joins but before Baratie arc -

Luffy had chosen his favorite spot on the Going Merry the first day they'd set sail- sitting perched on top of the figurehead, balanced precariously over the water- nothing but an unobstructed view of sea and sky stretching out endlessly in front of him.

Nami has yet to meet a Devil Fruit user so unafraid of the sea as Luffy. It should come as no surprise- she has yet to find anything that Luffy is afraid of. Nami isn’t afraid of the sea but she knows better than to disrespect it. She knows that like her captain, Luffy, that the sea has no sense of boundaries, is beholden to no logic or reason. And like her other captain, Arlong, it has no mercy and it can take and take indefinitely.

Nami watches him atop Merry’s head from afar and thinks that the sea might reach up to take him, to swallow him and carry him away. And then one day it does.

It’s an afternoon where the horizon is endless on all sides of the ship, with no island expected to appear for days to come. The skies are muted, there’s a stillness in the air, but Nami is a navigator, she knows that stillness on the sea is always a lie. Luffy, too, on the figurehead, looks momentarily still and calm but she knows that won’t last either. Nami can predict the weather. She’s given up on trying to predict Luffy.

Merry rides on the ocean’s back, creaking gently as waves crawl up her sides and then retreat like living things. Nami stands at the balcony of the quarter deck.

With his back to her she sees where his hair is getting long, tangled at the nape of his neck. And thinks, if it will be up to her to cut it, at some point. Like how it has fallen to her to cook the crew’s meals and sew shut the holes in Luffy’s hat. Strange, intimate, tasks of care that she’s never performed for anyone but herself before.

Sometimes he turns his head slightly and she gets a glimpse of the sickle shaped scar on his cheek; of the nearly serene expression he wears sometimes when he thinks no one is around to witness it.

Occasionally a breeze blows over the water and the hat on his head twitches at the edges- a tease, like the wind is reminding him how easily it can blow his treasure away. It makes Nami nervous but Luffy never seems to notice. She wonders if he’s never had anything taken away from him, if that’s how he can stay so self assured. If all the important things she’s had taken from her are why she can never seem to relax. The hat keeps its place even when he doesn’t reach up to hold it down.

But no one stays on luck’s good side forever.

She’s looking down at her map, and then when she looks up, he’s gone.

There’s not even a tell tale splash of him hitting the water. The sky hasn’t changed, the sea still, and yet his seat is empty.

Nami is paralyzed. Her throat too tight to even call for help from Usopp or Zoro who are below deck and out of earshot anyway. She drops the map she’s holding and runs toward the bow but she’s pulling off her shoes with one hand already as she goes. Before she has time to think she’s diving in over the edge.

The water she plunges into is cold, silent, breathless.

There’s enough sunlight cutting through from the surface to make out his silhouette as she pulls herself further down, to where the sea is wine dark and heavy.

In the water, everything is dyed indigo, and Luffy is suspended in it like a bug in amber, motionless and limp, though his hair and clothes move without gravity, his hair a dark, swirling, crown obscuring his eyes, his shirt a flag of color in the dark, floating in an almost imperceptible current, trying to pull away from the anchor its attached to.

Nami’s hand seeks his, she pulls at slippery, icy, fingers. But he’s heavy as lead, continuing to sink further like someone is deep below him, pulling him down by his feet. The ocean laying claim to him, taking revenge on its would-be king.

Her arms encircle his waist and she pumps with her legs, eyes on the twinkle of sunlight above their heads. Luffy is so heavy. And cold.

Nami isn’t a hero. She’s scared. And angry. The muscles in her legs burn and her chest aches from holding her breath. But she can’t stop thinking, again and again, “if I hadn’t been here, he would be dead right now. He would be dead right now.” And the image of Luffy lifeless at the floor of the ocean is unbearable. He’s supposed to be the one with all the luck.

When she reaches the surface she gasps for breath so deeply that her head falls under again, her legs forgetting to swim, she inhales water deep up her nose, chokes. She rights herself and pulls Luffy’s head up next to her by his hair, his mouth falling open, though she can’t hear him taking in any air.

She turns toward the ship and sees that on the surface of the waves, the straw hat is bobbing, only a few feet away. Luffy had been taken from the safety of his favorite spot on the figurehead, the hat had been taken from the safety of its favorite spot on his head, and looked lost without him, lonely, even. Nami uses one arm to pull herself closer to the ship, the other arm holding Luffy up, and before ascending the rope ladder, she considers the hat, and she thinks about leaving it to float away. Just for a half a second, she thinks about it. Just to see what would happen. To see what he’d do. But she’s done a lot of cruel things in her life already, and she’s trying to do less. She adjusts her grip on Luffy’s waist and reaches out to grab the hat.

She drops Luffy without ceremony on the deck of the ship and his head flops to the side lifelessly, his face ghost pale all the way down to his lips. Motionless in a way that couldn’t be mistaken for sleep. Nami can barely catch her own breath, there’s water in her sinuses and she’s shivering but she bends over his body, pressing her ear to his mouth. She can’t hear his breathing, even as the wetness of his lower lip brushes the shell of her ear. All she can hear is the ocean lapping against the side of the boat, reaching to reclaim the prize she’d deprived it of.

All she can hear is her own desperate gasps of breath, wracking her body, like sobs. Like them.

“Dammit…”

She intertwines her hands and places them over his ribcage, and begins compressing them against him, digging her palms in and trying to keep the rhythm steady even as her hands shake and water drips from her hair in cold rivulets down her back. Soaked through to the skin, Luffy’s shirt is the color of a dried bloodstain.

“C’mon… C’mon… C’mon…” with every compression.

She stops, swiping her hair out of her eyes, lifts up Luffy’s chin and pinches his nose. His lips are cold and salty to taste, yielding under hers as she breathes into him. She comes up for air, inhales as deeply as she can, tips his head back by the hair this time, fingers curling against wet strands at the nape of his neck, wrings it into her fist until sea water drips past her knuckles and over her wrist. She clamps her eyes shut and she tries to teach him how to breathe again. To remember how to live again.

It’s the third breath, he makes a gurgling noise and his body begins thrashing against hers. She lets go and he flops onto his side, choking up brine onto the deck and coughing water out of his lungs.

Predictably, the first thing he does when he catches his breath is touch the top of his head, feeling for his hat, then turns to see it laid next to him. He doesn’t even shake the water from his hair before putting it back on his head and flashing a wide grin to Nami and letting out a hoarse laugh.

“That was close!” His voice scratchy from choking.

“Don’t laugh. It isn’t funny.” Nami says coldly.

“I’m relieved to be alive.” He leans his head back, taking long, grateful, gulps of air.

Nami glares at him.

“How stupid would you feel? Losing your dream like that? Before you even get to the Grand Line?” She bites out. But he looks back at her serenely. Water drips from the brim of his hat onto his face, clumping his eyelashes together, dark and dewey.

“But you saved me.”

He says as if it had always been a certainty. And there was nothing to worry about. In the world. Ever. That makes her furious.

“What if I’m not around next time, dammit?!” her voice rises and cracks and she remembers that she’s out of breath too.

Luffy fixes her with one of those solemn looks he only saves for rare occasions. Luffy can veer from clueless to penetrating faster than an ocean gale.

“Why wouldn’t you be around?” he asks.

She shivers, her clothes cold and clinging to her skin. The tattoo on her arm. She wonders if he can see it through the white of her wet shirt. Sometimes it feels like it itches, now it feels like a sunburn. She turns, wrings the water out of her skirt.

“I’m not going anywhere.” She mutters. She lies. It’s a well rehearsed lie, but it doesn’t come out as easily as it usually does. For some reason the look on Luffy’s face makes her think he doesn’t believe it. But he smiles back at her anyway.

She looks away from him, toward the horizon. “Next time… Get one of the others to save your ass… It can be someone else’s problem if you die on them.”

Luffy gets back on Merry’s head because he never learns. He closes his eyes and folds his arms behind his head, letting the breeze dry him. She doesn’t waste her breath scolding him. There’s some things she’ll never learn either.

A storm comes that night. Just like she’d thought it would. The rain beats steady as a drum at the circular porthole windows of the dining room after dinner.

“You need a haircut.” Nami observes. And leads Luffy back to her bedroom, away from the noise and laughter of the others. Where it’s silent except for the faint growl of thunder, the waves battering the sides of the ship.

She lights a candle. Shadows cross Luffy’s unsmiling face and he looks so different than he does in the sunlight that for a moment it takes Nami aback. He’s a man. Not just a boy.

She kisses him. His lips are warm now, more dry, but she runs the tip of her tongue just faintly against his lower lip and imagines she can still taste the sea on it. Luffy lets her, not closing his eyes, until she pulls away and he blinks at her with a face devoid of curiosity or surprise.

“What was that about?” he says.

Nami huffs a laugh. “You wouldn’t understand.”

His eyebrows knit together and he sticks his lip out petulantly. “I understand plenty.”

This time, he initiates. Clumsily, brief, his teeth a hard wall she feels the press of behind the softness of his mouth. He straightens up, unabashed by the display and waiting for her reply.

She remembers abruptly sometimes, he’s really not much younger than her. She feels like she’s been alive for a hundred years. She wonders how many hundreds of years he’s been alive. He already has one indelible scar. She wonders how many he’ll have someday. And does he ever forget that it’s there? Like she does with her tattoo? Then catch a glimpse of his reflection and remember who he is and how much it hurts?

“You can touch it.”

“What?” she whispers, because it’s dark, and they’re the only two there- in the dark with the candle’s warmth between them, and she doesn’t want to speak over the sound of the sea.

He sits on the edge of her bed without looking away. “My scar. You can touch it. I don’t mind.”

She realizes she’d been staring. She sits down next to him and raises her hand to his cheek, traces the scar with her fingertips while he watches her without blinking. It’s rough, a divet in otherwise smooth skin, the ridge of it guides her fingertips along its curved path like a line drawn on a map. Whatever did it, had gone deep.

He laughs, and it’s so sudden she jumps in surprise.

“Tickles.” he says.

Nami takes his face in both her hands, pulls him down onto the bed with her, opens his mouth with hers. She breathes against his lips, feels his breath returned on her skin, proof of life- his and hers. She lets his breath fall between her lips, breathes it in as her own.

Her fingers slides up his shirt, landing just west of his heart. Like the sea, she reaches out to touch something she can’t have. She tries to pull him under, she kisses him breathless.

Luffy’s hands roam over her body with uncertainty, like a mouth trying to form the words of a language foreign to him. The ocean beneath the ship makes the bed roll gently on its wave, her hips canting into his thigh on the swell, and on the next crest Luffy flips her over onto her back, blanketing her body with the weight of his. In the candle light he watches her as he kisses her, his eyes open and his lashes low.

She puts her arms around his neck and holds onto him as if he could be her lifeline.

The End.


End file.
